It’s a gruesome story that’s been in the news for almost a year now. Outrage was fanned the world over after four Indian men brutally raped and killed a woman during a bus ride in New Delhi. I was angry when I saw the reports, and you probably were, too. Now the four men have been sentenced to death, and while justice was achieved in India, there are countless women here in America for whom it has not yet been accomplished.
Let’s be honest. Thousands of women are being victimized in abortion clinics every day right here in our own home country. Pregnant mothers are left emotionally and physically scarred after visiting any one of countless clinics like Kermit Gosnell’s, scattered throughout America. It seems that we almost daily hear about additional abortion clinics being investigated or closed in virtually all corners of the country, because of their unsafe, unsanitary, inhumane conditions. You can be sure there are hundreds more not yet discovered, but operating just out of public view. At these “houses of horror,” women endure procedures which are violent and traumatic, not only for the children inside them, but for their own bodies as well.
In a recent interview, pro-life advocate Chelsen Vicari spoke with Ashley Granger, a 29-year-old mother who had an abortion when she was a single, confused college student. (Granger is now an outspoken activist for the unborn, widely known for her powerful testimony at the Texas State Capitol when pro-abortionists began chanting, “Hail Satan,” behind her.) She told Vicari that, although everyone in her life at the time said that the abortion would be a painless and easy procedure, the horrible experience still sticks with her to this day. Despite the deceptions of abortion clinic staff, Ashley confirmed that the procedure itself was a violent one: “A gentle suction is what [the abortionists] described it as. Let me tell you, there was nothing gentle about it.” The machine used to suck her child from her body “is twenty times more powerful than your household vacuum. If that’s what they’re calling ‘gentle,’ that’s not gentle.”
As gruesome as the procedure was, Ashley knows from personal experience that the effects of an abortion don’t end after the procedure is complete. At the clinic, Ashley was simply guided to a recliner to deal with the pain, surrounded by other sobbing women who were devastated after the death of their child. That emotional pain and devastation lasted years for Ashley. She admitted that the grief pushed her toward alcohol and substance abuse, and even to attempt suicide three times. Only through the transforming grace of Jesus Christ has she found healing.
Ashley is not alone in what she went through. Indeed, each and every mother who undergoes an abortion suffers profound wounds that are traumatic and long-lasting, even when the abortions go “according to plan.” But there’s no fanfare for the woman who falls victim to such an atrocity. There are no media reports, no protests, and no cries for justice — only another woman marred, her conscience seared, her body maimed, and her life very possibly ended.
Answer me this: How sick is it that we (supposedly “civilized” Americans) are ready to jump to the defense of women a world away but are too often deaf to the cries of the women victimized right here at home? Maybe it’s because these crimes are too close to home and too gruesome for us to think about for long. Maybe it’s because it’s too shameful for us to acknowledge that we’ve ignored them for years on end that we go right on pretending they are not happening at an alarming rate right in our own backyard. And somehow, we’re okay with these lies.
Yet, let me be clear at the risk of stating the obvious. The grievous brutality of abortion will not disappear as long as we who claim to despise barbaric violence against women simply go on ignoring these vile acts right under our noses. Containment and appeasement won’t work. Guised under “women’s health,” the perpetrators will perpetuate their abhorrent work unabated. No matter how hard we hope for “change,” we have to realize that we have become a part of the problem through our own complacency.
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Evil is like an open flame. If we let it continue burning, it goes right on spreading and consuming and destroying. To put out the wildfire of abortion and stop its devastating effects on American women, we can’t ignore it and hope it simply goes away. We must actually oppose it for the evil that it is in order for it to be halted. Our only choice is to be honest and admit its existence, to pray fervently against it, and to advocate for meaningful change in our culture and in our laws.
Abortion threatens to ravage our society. It will gut our country, leaving America as a burned-out shell of the moral and virtuous nation we once were, if we go right on overlooking it as we have decade after decade. It doesn’t have to be this way, though. If we as Americans raise our collective voice in opposition to this outrage, we have the power to end this humanitarian crisis occurring day in and day out right here at home.
LifeNews Note: Joseph Rossell is a graduate student at George Mason University and is the Assistant to the Chief Financial Officer at Concerned Women for America.
